Elves and Accents.

[musashi]

It seems to me that the accent from your original language is more a matter of skill in that language which is taken care of by the fact that you can't speak a language that well when you first learn it, while it doesn't carry over your original language it does seem to be taken care of in part already.

I think that is supposed to represent things like vocabulary and grammer knowledge, being able to physically put a setence together and have it convey a meaning. Not the particular lithe of mode of expression you opt to use.

Like, if you listen to a Japanese guy who speaks no english at all, his sentence will come out somethin like: Ahhh chotto ne ... you ... ah ... are ... are ... nanda nanda ... ah ... you .... are ... for .... ame? Amerika tte iu?"

That's a bit difficult to understand when it isn't written out for you to go back and look at. You might just not get it entirely. That, to me, is kind of like the language code's jumble based on skill proficiency.

But a different Japanese guy who does peak English is still going to sound something like: He wants tsu say ... are you fro ramu amerika?

You'll understand him fine, but the accent of his mother tongue is still clearly pronounced for a long, long while after fluency is attained. So I don't think the skill in a language translates well into an expression of that person's home dialiect.

Another problem I have with that is that it would fail to take into account the fact that ... a russian sudent and a japanese student will both suck at english early on and be barely able to string a sentence together, but their accents are still plaily different for anyone to hear. What you propose would not properly represent that.

[Kankfly]

Got tired of reading through 4 pages worth of posts. So if someone's suggested it already, ignore this one.

How about just:

The elfy, elfy-looking elf says in perfect allundean...

As for accents between each delf tribes, I'd personally prefer it to be RPed out. While an Akei would talk about the Mother alot, a Sun Runner would be all flamboyant and such.

[X-D]

Musashi, that would be because when I asked why my elf had no accent and got the answer, that was like 2003, maybe 04.  My elf getting rinth accent was 2007 and a different staffer.

As to why a new accent was put into place instead of taking rinthi away, well, that makes sense as well. If they cannot turn the ability to learn accents off, it just means at a later time I would have gotten stuck with another accent and asked for it to be taken, then again and again and again.

Remember, for a long time after accents went in, this was not an issue, the ability to learn accents is new and desert elves were overlooked when that was added.

[musashi]

Ok so ... even then, assuming that you're entirely correct and the delves should speak the elusive "perfect" allundean ... there is still a code oversight that could stand to be corrected, yeah?

[mansa]

You should email the MUD about it, -or- use the request tool.

[IAmJacksOpinion]

Okay, first off, lets stop arguing with Daedrug about his accent. WE are never going to convince him he has one, and HE is never going to convince us he doesn't. End of story.

ac⋅cent
  /n. ˈæksɛnt; v. ˈæksɛnt, ækˈsɛnt/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [n. ak-sent; v. ak-sent, ak-sent] Show IPA
–noun
1.    prominence of a syllable in terms of differential loudness, or of pitch, or length, or of a combination of these.
3.    a mark indicating stress (as (ʹ, ʹ), or (ˈ, ˌ), or (′, ″)), vowel quality (as French grave `, acute ´, circumflex ^), form (as French la "the" versus là "there"), or pitch.
a.    the unique speech patterns, inflections, choice of words, etc., that identify a particular individual:
8.    a mode of pronunciation, as pitch or tone, emphasis pattern, or intonation, characteristic of or peculiar to the speech of a particular person, group, or locality: French accent; Southern accent

In linguistics, an accent is a manner of pronunciation of a language. Accents can be confused with dialects which are varieties of language differing in vocabulary, syntax, and morphology, as well as pronunciation. Dialects are usually spoken by a group united by geography or social status.[

As human beings spread out into isolated communities, stresses and peculiarities develop. Over time these can develop into identifiable accents.

When a group defines a standard pronunciation, speakers who deviate from it are often said to "speak with an accent". People from the United States would "speak with an accent" from the point of view of an Australian, and vice versa. Accents such as BBC English or General American may sometimes be erroneously[/u][/size] designated in their countries of origin as "accentless" to indicate that they offer no obvious clue to the speaker's regional background.

And though you might not agree they speak perfect allundean, the staffer that told me was an Overlord...so I doubt very much if that is up for debate.

There is no such thing as a "perfect" accent IRL. IRL, accents vary typically by region or group. (Northern, Southern, New Yorker, Boston, etc..) IG accents vary by region or group. (Northern, Southern, and Tribal.) If accents were added IG to mirror accents IRL, then the Overlord was wrong. Or, if he was right, then he was right under unrealistic pretenses. When you're as dumb and stubborn as me, everything is open for debate.

Accent does not equal ability to speak a language, or skill with a language. Accent simply reflects the inflictions we put on different letters and syllables because, quite simply, that's the way everyone around us did it when we were learning to speak. Perfect English would be to speak words exactly as they were written. Imperfect English would be ta speak da words while droppin' G's and changin' TH's ta D's, an' O's ta A's. However, that could also just be considered a dialect. (See, it's not necessarily OOC for people to talk like they're chewing on rocks, even though they're already coded with an accent.)


THEREFORE, yes elves need an accent. I love the idea of "desert accent" or "wasteland accented", "rural accented" or whatever, although if it's a matter of simplicity, I agree that:

Why not just give them all a tribal accent and let the players understand that if they're talking to an elf, his 'tribal' is not the same 'tribal' of an Al Seik?

[X-D]

Yes, I do agree that it needs to be fixed.

No I do not agree that they need an accent. No accent is still an accent.

I do not want to see desert allundean, pah allundean, dusty allundean, sunrunner allundean whatever, coded in. I don't want them to be given tribal or any other human or city accent as a stopgap.

I like them not having a known accent.

[mansa]

No accent is "they are speaking with the same accent as you".

That's what the code says.  Right now, it's a bug.  Not a feature.

[musashi]

Yeah, that's my main beef with it, as Mansa said.

But there is also the bug issue that X-D pointed out, where once delves pick up an accent they are stuck with it, with no way to return to their normal "allundean accented" way of speaking. These are both bug issues that I think could be patched up without too much of a fuss.

Also, to Mansa: I fully intend to submit this whole thing to staff via the request tool, but I wanted to get some more feedback from other players, have some discussion, and be able to look at viewpoints other than my own before compiling anything to send off to staff. I felt like that would be a better way to go about it. Glad I did too, as I wasn't aware of the bug X-D mentioned, and now we all are.

Back to X-D: My issue with them having a "no accent accent" is two-fold. One, as Mansa said, and as I have said several times already before that, no accent currently means they are speaking the same accent as you are. To claim that the delves speak perfect allundean, whatever that means, is one thing ... but it is entirely another to imply that they should sound to the ear of everyone who listens to them as though they were a native from next door. Delf legs are already magic enough, delf speak doesn't need to be magic as well. That's a bug, plain and simple.

The second issue I have with the "no accent" accent is that it would create another, different misconception with the code. Lets say for a moment that the lack of an accent IS the allundean accent, and lets even assume my first issue above was fixed. Lets say now, everyone sees everyone else's accent no matter if its the same as their own or not. So now when someone hears a no accent person speak, they will know: Oh! That's what someone who speaks allundean sounds like!

Assuming all that ... we're still left to explain why the races who speak allundean, kentu, heshrak, tatlum, and every other language in the game all have the same "no accent" accent. Does allundean sound like kentu? Does it sound like heshrak and tatlum? All of the other "we don't speak sirihish as a native language" races, be they playable or non playable for the moment ... will all have to share the same "null" accent which is not in any way a realistic expectation for the world. A halfling who learned sirihish should not sound like a delf who learned sirihish, the languages they both come from are vastly different, but to the player listening, they would appear to both speak with the same accent. That's yet another bug, in my opinion.

I still feel like the simpliest solution would be to give the delves (nay, to give every race) a racial accent. It would solve all 3 of the problems I mentioned above, and require no new code aside from the insertion of a few more accents. Whereas what you seem to be suggesting would require at least some work-around coding just to end up creating another bug as it tries to fix the one set out to.

[X-D]

Alright, this is hard to explain...let me see.

First, I've always taken the "No accent/perfect allundean...heshrak etc" to mean that the accent was either not noticiable enough to emulate OR, and this is the way I play it, that the accent is a homogeneous mix of all the accents.

I play it that way because it gives a good reason why you would not notice it as being northern or southern or really enough different from your own accent to matter.

It also means that it is a nearly impossible manner of speech to pick up second hand. Something else I like.

With the current code, if you add in accent for delves, anybody that spends any time at all with them will pick the accent up. I don't like that.

Now, if they were able to code it so you could not pick up the delf accent untill you had at least three other accents...well, I suppose that would be alright.

[musashi]

If racial accents were to be added, I wonder if maybe with a little extra work it could be made so that picking up a group's racial accent was only possible after fluency in the racial language was attained. That way someone spending a lot of time around a racial group might open that group's language early on ... but be forced to build it into fluency before ever having a chance to open the accent up. I think that might put some distance between a non-delf and their racial accent for you.

It would also solve another odd thing I never liked: I think it's weird how my PC's can have tribal accented sirihish before they ever learn a word of bendune.

[daedroug]

No accent is "they are speaking with the same accent as you".

That's what the code says.  Right now, it's a bug.  Not a feature.

That's not necessarily true as I said before your less likely to notice a difference if there is no differences from your own speech except the drolls, slang, and changes that your own accent incurs on the language.

[mansa]

No accent is "they are speaking with the same accent as you".

That's what the code says.  Right now, it's a bug.  Not a feature.

That's not necessarily true as I said before your less likely to notice a difference if there is no differences from your own speech except the drolls, slang, and changes that your own accent incurs on the language.

No.

If you have 'northern accent' active, and you're speaking to someone who also is speaking 'northern accent', you will get the echo:
so and so says, in <language>:
   "blah blah blah blah."

If you have 'northern accent' not active, and you're speaking to someone who is speaking 'northern accent', you will get the echo:
so and so says, in northern <language>:
   "blah blah blah blah."

Therefore, if the code echos:
so and so says, in <language>:
   "blah blah blah blah."
You automatically assume that they are speaking with your currently toggled accent.  That's the way the code was designed.  If you don't see an accent, they ARE SPEAKING YOUR ACCENT.

Anything otherwise is a code bug.

If racial accents were to be added, I wonder if maybe with a little extra work it could be made so that picking up a group's racial accent was only possible after fluency in the racial language was attained. That way someone spending a lot of time around a racial group might open that group's language early on ... but be forced to build it into fluency before ever having a chance to open the accent up. I think that might put some distance between a non-delf and their racial accent for you.

It would also solve another odd thing I never liked: I think it's weird how my PC's can have tribal accented sirihish before they ever learn a word of bendune.

I like that.  Have the accents be a subset of specific languages.

[Reiloth]

Alright, this is hard to explain...let me see.

First, I've always taken the "No accent/perfect allundean...heshrak etc" to mean that the accent was either not noticiable enough to emulate OR, and this is the way I play it, that the accent is a homogeneous mix of all the accents.

I play it that way because it gives a good reason why you would not notice it as being northern or southern or really enough different from your own accent to matter.

It also means that it is a nearly impossible manner of speech to pick up second hand. Something else I like.

With the current code, if you add in accent for delves, anybody that spends any time at all with them will pick the accent up. I don't like that.

Now, if they were able to code it so you could not pick up the delf accent untill you had at least three other accents...well, I suppose that would be alright.

I fail to see why someone spending enough time around d-elves to learn Allundean could not also learn their accent. While you may not like it, every other accent is learnable. Desert elves should not be excluded.

[X-D]

Not the point, the point is that it would be too easy, not representing the fact that they speak either a perfect form or one that uses all accents.

As it sits right now you can learn an accent the first time you hear it or the 10,00th, odds are it will be sooner.

[musashi]

I agree with X-D here in that I think accents should generally be learned AFTER fluency in a language is obtained, instead of randomly ... but most likely before ... one can speak the language from which the accent derived. This goes both ways. Delves probably often pick up sirihish accents long before they can speak fluent sirihish (unless they started as linguists of course), and non tribal humans almost always pick up the tribal accent long before they are fluent bendune speakers. I wish this were different 

[Reiloth]

I agree with X-D here in that I think accents should generally be learned AFTER fluency in a language is obtained, instead of randomly ... but most likely before ... one can speak the language from which the accent derived. This goes both ways. Delves probably often pick up sirihish accents long before they can speak fluent sirihish (unless they started as linguists of course), and non tribal humans almost always pick up the tribal accent long before they are fluent bendune speakers. I wish this were different 

Agreed.

Accents should definitely be picked up after complete fluency in a language. I cannot pretend to speak Russian in the same accent my grandparents did. No matter how hard I tried, in my current status. If I moved to Russia -- Sure, I might have a better chance, but shit, that would take YEARS to pick up.

Along the same lines, from previous in the thread in what musashi mentioned -- How can I speak like a Russian if I do not know Russian? How can I speak as if I know Bendune if I do not know Bendune?

[Lizzie]

You might not be able to speak it with any fluency at all, but if you are exposed to it long enough, without having learned what the words mean, you would be able to distinguish, perhaps, a high-cultured city russian accent from a low-cultured siberian accent. You might even be able to speak English with each accent, much as many people can mimic the foreign-accent english speakers, without knowing a stitch of that foreign language.

I think it really depends on what it is you're hearing and what it is you're listening to. If I don't speak allundean, I would still, eventually, be able to tell if it's a northern-city, southern-city, or desert-elf (aka tribal) allundean. I might not be able to narrow it down to an individual tribe without study, and with study would likely come learning the language itself.

The same as if I'm a desert elf, visiting the cities. Accents are accents because of specific sounds, cadences, and rhythms of speech - not because of the words used. A rinthi accent should be distinguishable enough from a northern Lirathan templar's speech, that with enough time -anyone- would be able to tell the difference even if they don't understand a single word of sirihish.

They might not understand the significance of the differences without learning the language first, but they would (eventually) recognize them.

[musashi]

I disagree with that. I don't think that people who are inept in a language can pick accents out of it with any degree of success. I study a lot of different languages, and the nuiance of accents has only ever started to come into light for me after I was at least conversationally fluent in the language in question, and it's always kind of exciting when I first start to be able to hear those different accents coming out.

Americans tend to think that we can mimic accents from areas we have never been to or for languages we have never spoken ... but we're embarissing ourselves, to be honest. Ask anyone from the UK if they've ever been fooled by an American trying to talk like a limey ... and that's an accent based off our own mother tongue, and we still fail, epically, when trying to mimic it. This holds true even more so to different languages.

My dad, for example ... was trying to be funny and left me a voice mail message in which he was trying to talk in a japanese accent. But being american, he didn't actually know what a japanese accent sounded like, and did a bad misrepresentation of a chinese accent instead. For the record, chinese people would not have been fooled. When I called him back later and told him that he was like: Oh really? Other folks here thought it sounded alright.

Yes dad ... except other folks there don't know what they're talking about either.  

But I'm not just picking on americans, this is a two way street. This is why we laugh when people from europe try to talk in what they perceive as an "american accent". This is also why a lot of them won't want to try to do it when you ask them to. Unlike us, the rest of the world's population typically know already that they aren't going to be able to mimic a foreign accent well enough to do anything other than make someone laugh at their attempt.

Mimicing an accent IRL to a degree that you can fool natives is incredibly difficult and usually left to linguists and actors with linguist speech coaches drilling them for the sake of cinema.

I think Armageddon's current code may even reflect this as shown here from the accent help file:

A thorough understanding of the fundamentals of a language are required
before one can make out the subtle nuances of an accent.

[Twilight]

I had a very strong Mexican accent whenever I try to speak Spanish.  From my first Spanish class in High School on.  Enough to get commented on by every single Spanish teach I ever had (which, strangely, none have been Mexican).

I grew up with a lot of Mexicans, hearing (but not understanding/speaking) a -lot- of Spanish, and English with a Mexican accent.  That is where I picked up my own accent from, when I speak Spanish.  Weird, but true.  So, yes, I do think you can pick up an accent before the language.

[mansa]

... So, yes, I do think you can pick up an accent before the language.

Hmm.

You don't need to know the language perfectly to pick up an accent, but you need to be able to pick out certain words.

A better code change would be to check to see if you have at least ~20% of the language in question before you can gain the accent.


So, what languages are there?  If it were me, I would code it out like this:


Sirihish
- Northern Accent
- Southern Accent
- Rinthi Accent
Allundean
- Rinthi Accent
- Northern Accent
- Southern Accent
- *Desert Elvish Accent
Mirukkum
- *Dwarvish Accent
Bendune
- Tribal Accent
Cavilish
- New Merchant House Only Accent?
Tatlum
- Special Secret Accents?


I would code it so that you can only learn an accent when:
A) You have at least 20% skill in the language that the accent belongs to
B) The person speaking the language and the accent in which that accent belongs to.
 i.e. No more learning Tribal Accent when someone is speaking Sirihish., only learning the accent when you understand a bit of Bendune, and someone is speaking Bendune with the Tribal Accent.

[Synthesis]

... So, yes, I do think you can pick up an accent before the language.

Hmm.

You don't need to know the language perfectly to pick up an accent, but you need to be able to pick out certain words.

A better code change would be to check to see if you have at least ~20% of the language in question before you can gain the accent.


So, what languages are there?  If it were me, I would code it out like this:


Sirihish
- Northern Accent
- Southern Accent
- Rinthi Accent
Allundean
- Rinthi Accent
- Northern Accent
- Southern Accent
- *Desert Elvish Accent
Mirukkum
- *Dwarvish Accent
Bendune
- Tribal Accent
Cavilish
- New Merchant House Only Accent?
Tatlum
- Special Secret Accents?


I would code it so that you can only learn an accent when:
A) You have at least 20% skill in the language that the accent belongs to
B) The person speaking the language and the accent in which that accent belongs to.
 i.e. No more learning Tribal Accent when someone is speaking Sirihish., only learning the accent when you understand a bit of Bendune, and someone is speaking Bendune with the Tribal Accent.

That doesn't cover the possibilities of a non-native speaker speaking a language poorly.  It should be possible to speak "northern-accented mirukkim" if you are a Tuluki human who learned mirukkim later on.  Sure, you might be speaking the right words, but your inflections and pronunciations will be heavily influenced by your original language, i.e. northern-style sirihish.

In fact, I would say that in a perfect system, when you learn a new language, you are forced to speak it in your native accent until you reach say, 50% proficiency.  At 50% you can switch to the "proper" accent for the language.  At 90% you should be able to start picking up any non-native accents for your new language.  In other words, even if you have the northern, southern, and tribal accents for sirihish, those accents don't automatically transfer to new languages you learn.  Once you learn allundean, you then have to relearn how each accent applies to allundean (except for your native accent, obviously).

This represents that, at first you speak Spanish like a Gringo.  Then you can sort of speak it like the Mexicans you learned it from.  But when you're completely fluent, you can pick up a Cuban accent and fake it.  But just because you know how to speak English like a Cuban doesn't mean that once you learn Spanish, you know how to speak it like a Cuban.

[musashi]

I would be cool with a system like that, but the problem with the current code is that once an accent unlocks, you have it at 100%. You go straight from nothing, to perfect, in a flash, and that also seems off to me.

In a system like the one you propose, I would like for accents to open up at low levels just like languages do and gradually improve over time up to 100%, also like languages do.

That would be an ideal system for me. Because while I readily agree that it is possible to have a smattering or a pinch of an accent early on the way Twilight was describing, I still maintain that no mexican people would have actually been fooled into thinking Twilight was a native, especially before he/she knew any spanish, and that is not an attack on Twlight in any way, it's just a fact of life.

I speak Japanese fluently, I recieve compliments about it every day (unfair example as Japanese people are annoying with their praise for even the smallest word uttered, they literally treat you as though you were a dog or a table that just started speaking), people even laugh or get surprised that I can babble on in the kansai dailect ... ... they still know I'm a foreigner before I tell them so when we're talking over the phone. The only time I've ever had someone tell me they didn't realize I was a foreigner was when I was singing ... and that's a whole different thing, accents disappear to a large degree when sung.

The chances of a person being able to mimic an accent perfectly before being at least as fluent in the language it came from is very likely equivilant to a person being able to play a musical instrument perfectly the first time they lay a hand on it. Does it happen in the stuff of legends? Sure ... but I would never expect it out of the norm.

[mansa]

That doesn't cover the possibilities of a non-native speaker speaking a language poorly.  It should be possible to speak "northern-accented mirukkim" if you are a Tuluki human who learned mirukkim later on.  Sure, you might be speaking the right words, but your inflections and pronunciations will be heavily influenced by your original language, i.e. northern-style sirihish.

In fact, I would say that in a perfect system, when you learn a new language, you are forced to speak it in your native accent until you reach say, 50% proficiency.  At 50% you can switch to the "proper" accent for the language.  At 90% you should be able to start picking up any non-native accents for your new language.  In other words, even if you have the northern, southern, and tribal accents for sirihish, those accents don't automatically transfer to new languages you learn.  Once you learn allundean, you then have to relearn how each accent applies to allundean (except for your native accent, obviously).

This represents that, at first you speak Spanish like a Gringo.  Then you can sort of speak it like the Mexicans you learned it from.  But when you're completely fluent, you can pick up a Cuban accent and fake it.  But just because you know how to speak English like a Cuban doesn't mean that once you learn Spanish, you know how to speak it like a Cuban.

Well.  That's sorta what I meant to say.

In that....

You learn a new language.
You speak the new language with your current accent, until you "branch" the "native" accent.
You can only learn the "native" accent when someone is speaking the language with the native accent at the same time.


But, yes, yes.  You and I are in agreement of how it should go, in a perfect world.

[spawnloser]

Quick fix for now, since this is in Code Discussion and not Reborn, institute a 'desert accent' and put it on all desert elves.